This disclosure relates to the field of electrical lighting sources and more particularly to replaceable light bulb devices using light emitting diodes (LEDs) and further relates to the use of illumination devices to transceive messages without the use of a network controller.
Communication among low-cost devices is useful in many applications. For example, in a home environment, room occupancy sensors, light switches, lamps, lamp dimmers, and a gateway to the Internet can all work together if they are in communication. A room in a home could be illuminated when people are present, or else an alarm could be sounded, depending on conditions established by a program running on a remote computer.
In addition, current LED illumination sources are either non-dimmable or use expensive and inefficient phase angle detection to provide dimming. Dimming levels are determined by the analog phase angle of the chopped sine wave that can vary depending on the alternating current voltage (VAC) powering the lighting circuit, the power line frequency, and the temperature of the individual illumination source. As a result, each illumination source in a bank of illumination sources, although driven from the same phase angle dimmer, may have a different brightness. Further, current illumination sources are inefficient because they store energy during the chopped phases of the main power's alternating current. The large components required to store the energy create undesirable physical dimensions for LED illumination sources.